we do as parents, we will have a million opportunities to screw it all up and another million opportunities to make it right. If I can’t help, I know someone who can. So you don’t need to worry about nursing.”
I want to add that it’s everything that happens after nursing that they need to worry about. But new parents don’t need to know that. They’ll have plenty of time to discover what horrors lie ahead. Like the College Tour.
OCTOBER 25, 2009
Hey, college girl! Rise and shine. The big day is here.”
Mom is in a superhigh, excited, bubbly mood. It is like being woken up by a Japanese game-show contestant. I slide my phone open, check the time. “It’s four thirty. Our flight isn’t until nine.”
“We need to leave a little early to beat traffic into the city.”
“Mom, it’s Sunday. There is no traffic.”
“Well, we have to allow time to get our bags through security.”
“Only because you refuse to check a suitcase.”
“Aubrey, that would add thirty dollars to the trip. Both ways. We can go out and have a nice dinner for that. Come on; security is going to be a nightmare.”
Getting through security at the airport is a nightmare. Mostly because Mom makes me wear the ultrajumbo, puffy, rainproof parka that she insisted on buying. I guess she thinks that the I’m-heading-to-the-Yukon-to-do-the-Iditarod look is in. I want to apologize to everyone in line behind us when she spaces out and doesn’t get her old waffle-stomper boots unlaced and off her feet before it is her turn to go through the scanner. Then the vast array of clinking bracelets she thinks are so cool and hip set off the metal detector, and there is another delay when she gets herded off into the Plexiglas cubicle and wanded.
When we finally get all dressed and ready for the dog sleds again, she goes, “Do you see why I insisted that we leave early? Getting through security is such a nightmare.” And I want to point out, “Don’t nightmares only happen when you’re asleep?” But I don’t say anything because she is in a superhigh, excited, bubbly mood and even I can’t tear the wings off that butterfly.
As for me, I am in a superlow, unexcited, dangerously undercaffeinated, sleep-deprived mood. Mom and I had a screaming fight last night in which I essentially begged her not to make me go on this tour. Her final big ultimate argument was that the tickets were nonrefundable. The fact that my whole entire life was going to be decided based on a couple of airline tickets caused my Inner Bitch to spring to life. My Inner Bitch will protect me from being stampeded into whatever version of life Mom has planned out for me. Inner Bitch is going to go on the tour with us.
On the plane, I immediately put my earbuds in and ignore the music while I remember the way Tyler’s voice had rumbled through me. I must have gone to sleep, because when Mom pokes me I feel as crabby and imposed upon as if she’d thrown on the light in the middle of the night. She is making it very hard for me to keep Inner Bitch restrained. I yank the earbuds out. “What?”
“The pilot just said that the Grand Canyon is coming up on our right.”
Instead of rolling my eyes or gasping like I want to, I just peaceably nod, and try to put the earbuds back in. But she stops me to rhapsodize about how beautiful the clouds are when viewed from up above. “Don’t they look like enchanted castles of feathers?”
“I guess.”
“You don’t seem very excited.”
“This is not the first time I’ve seen clouds.”
“But it’s the first time you’ve seen them on the way to visit your dream school.”
“When did Peninsula become my dream school?”
She is genuinely surprised. “Aubrey, we spent your entire junior year sifting through all those catalogs and going to all those College Nights.”
College Nights.
Eating subpar cookies and listening to kids ask suck-ass questions. That’s when it started to sink in that I was running like a hamster on a treadmill just so I could prove what a very special, very speedy hamster I was and be allowed to spend a fortune for the privilege of running on an even faster treadmill. I guess Mom hadn’t noticed that all College Nights had ended up doing was making me very, very tired.
“You’re acting like you don’t remember any of this. That we didn’t jointly decide that Peninsula sounded